Search For Lost Cities Futile, Frustrating

NBC takes an X-Files approach to its newest special, Biblical Mysteries: Sodom and Gomorrah, a chronicle of an expedition to find the archetypal cities of sin at the bottom of the Dead Sea.

In the special, to air on Sunday night, Bible scholar Michael Sanders discovers fascinating undersea structures, only to hear the Jordanian government withdraw permission to explore on its side. Scully couldn't be more frustrated.

The show is therefore doomed for anyone who gives it a bit of thought. If Sanders had really found the site of the cities, we'd be seeing it first on TV news, and in newspapers and newsmagazines.

Granted, many parts of the special sound like ratings gold. Interest in religion is at an all-time high, judging by books and TV shows about spirituality. Before Sanders and his crew, no one had filmed the bottom of the toxic Dead Sea. And Sodom and Gomorrah are more than Hebrew scriptures: They embody a gnawing collective dread that at some point, we'll have crossed the point of no return with the Almighty.

Sanders, whose Bible Mysteries teaching ministry is based in Irvine, Calif., has become famous for spinning out maverick theories, such as his ideas that the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel are in eastern Turkey. This one, oddly, started with a clue from orbit - a 1994 photo by the space shuttle Endeavor, showing anomalous bumps at the bottom of the Dead Sea, which is supposed to be flat.

The NBC special adds other details. For one, a 16th century map of the Middle East places Sodom and Gomorrah at the bottom of that sea. For another, cliffs on Jordan's side are embedded with chunks of sulfur, or brimstone as it's called in the Bible. Also, hundreds of thousands of skeletons lie in three cemeteries in the area, some with burn marks.

Sanders and Rich Slater, the owner of the little yellow submarine, make a series of dives in the surprisingly clear green water. Their camera does record some odd-shaped mounds of salt - even, at one point, a patch of vertical surface with horizontal stripes - unlike anything else known to be in that strange sea. Sanders is convinced these are the salt-crusted remains of the legendary Sodom and Gomorrah.

By then, though, they have strayed far into Jordan's portion of the tense border with Israel, and the nervous sentries order the mini-sub to surface and vacate the area. The expedition ends with some tantalizing images, but no proof that they've found actual cities.

All of which makes an interesting half-hour special. Unfortunately, some 11th commandment decrees that all such shows take at least an hour. So we get plenty of filler material, like vistas of the Dead Sea valley and sun-sparkled clasps of the oddly slow-lapping waves.

We also get three rehashes of the Sodom story, with voiceovers about God's judgment, newsreels of lava flows and grainy clips from biblical silent films. And much is made of past wars with Jordan, which claims half the sea, including half of the site Sanders is examining.

The explorer starts out trying to sound scientific and dispassionate, but he betrays his hopes by grilling an Israeli scientist. Twice, he presses Zvi Ben-Abraham to say the structures "could" be artificial. When the cautious scientist demurs, Sanders asks what they could possibly be besides Sodom.

The answer, of course, is that they could be a lot of things. They could be the product of some unknown natural process. Could be an ancient village, but not Sodom.

Suppose Sanders did dredge up proof of Sodom and Gomorrah. Skeptics would say that, OK, the stories do preserve some primal tale of destruction, but it doesn't prove divine intervention.

The Bible is more than history; it is also a book of spirit, of heart, of covenant between God and people. You can't prove such things with a mini-sub. You can only let the words sink inside yourself.

James D. Davis can be reached at jdavis@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4730.